


The Unbecoming of Hange Zoë

by Hesiones



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hesiones/pseuds/Hesiones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>III<br/>Outside<br/>how the sun<br/>is awake      What a light<br/>So wide!</p><p>     In The Desert   ◘   Joseph Ceravolo</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unbecoming of Hange Zoë

**Author's Note:**

> Anon requested: (levihan) Levi watches as Hanji transitions between being a titan hater to one excited about learning about them  
> Anon requested: (levihan) Hanji misplaced her glasses  
> Levihan Week Day 1 Prompt: Vision
> 
> This is reaaaaaaaally late but I HAVE DONE IT I ACTUALLY FINISHED IT here you go!  
> Points to you if you recognize the reference in the title.

    The earth pounds faintly, erratically, like a failing heart. From behind a cluster of trees to our front left, something yellow and ugly lurches out onto the plains.

    Thirty meters forward, Hange bends over her horse and urges it towards the ten meter class Deviant. I slip the signal gun out of its holster, set a flare in it, raise my arm, cover my ears, and fire.

    Black smoke jets into the sky. I leave it behind.

 

* * *

 

    “Deviant by the central left flank!” someone calls out.

    “Hange’s stationed there,” Erwin shouts in reply, and the matter is settled.

 

* * *

 

    My eyes keep wandering to her while she and her horse ride out to meet the titan. Not that she won’t be fine, even with that grin on her face. She’s better at killing Deviants than I am.

    She’ll be fine because of that grin on her face.

    Takes one to deal with one.

    I keep Hange within sight, uselessly trying to blink something (that’s as painful as shit that won’t come out) out of my eye.

    The Deviant leaps toward Hange - the last time I saw something like that was back on the streets, when an acrobat troupe came to town.

    Disgusting.

    On the second long leap, Hange shoots her cables into the calf of the raised left leg and launches off her mare, Bryna, who trots off to a safe distance (she’s been with Hange long enough to know her way around Deviants). Hange swoops around and down to slice its heel, then up on the momentum, before she disappears behind the titan.

     I can almost see the titan blood spray.

     Deviant lands on the foot - crumples. Right before it hits the grass, Hange cries war, and this time I can see the blood fly up from the titan’s nape as surely as I can see the glint of Hange’s steaming swords.

     The titan collapses onto the ground with a loud snap. Hange bounces lightly upon impact.

     I’m almost about to pass her. She’d better hurry up and get on her horse - but she never does hurry up, anyway. She likes to take her sweet time.

    Instead, I slow down. Like always.

    The Deviant’s head has been severed from the neck. That was the snap, though Hange probably wasted energy by cutting too hard, too.

    That grin again, sun-blind, and she brings her leg back to give the head a good kick, sending it… flying.

   Hange loses her balance for a long second.

    Since Hange’s not grinning anymore, I bring Dulais to a stop

    One second. Two seconds. I open my mouth to -

    “Levi!” Hange shrieks. “Come over here!”

    I sigh, nudging Dulais towards her at a canter.

    I've never heard her shriek like that, though.

    Hange vaults off the titan's steaming body and lands in a crouch.

    As I approach, she runs up to me and drags me off Dulais.

    "Hange, what the f - "

    "It's light," she half-states, half-whispers, clutching my arm while I stumble to the ground; her voice trembles, and she looks like she's just killed the last titan to defile the face of this earth.

    I think she's going to cry.

    Hange pulls me after her to the disintegrating head. When we get there, she slows down and... hesitates, giving me less than a second to admire the grace of her sloping neck and strong jaw before she tentatively approaches the steam and the embers. I stay back.

    She stares into the Deviant's evaporating eye for an endless minute, surrounded by smoke and vapors that billow into the sky.

    I don't see her move her foot, but she kicks the head again.

    It’s airborne for a meter, then it thumps onto the earth again, rolling another meter or so.

    The steam leaves Hange. I walk to her side. The air’s still warm around her.

    “Why are they so light?” she breathes, her voice still trembling, her safety goggles cracked due to the sudden transition from scorching heat to cool spring winds.

    “Why do they just… vanish?” she continues while I reach up to gently pull her goggles off her head. “Why don’t they have genitalia? How are they made? How do they regenerate?”

    She’s going to cry, says the desperate look in her tear-brightened, golden brown eyes. I hand her the fractured safety goggles, and she clutches them tightly in her white-knuckled left hand.

    “How can they just - make such a - such tough flesh from thin air in minutes?”

    I tug a handkerchief out of my trouser pocket.

    “Why don’t - why can’t they digest what they eat? how do they survive without food, without nutrition? Why do they throw it all up? Why are they humanoid? Why do they only eat humans? Why do they… eat?”

    She’s crying, choking on sobs and words, shaking. I place the handkerchief in her other hand. She clutches it in a fist, then unclentches the fist and uses the cloth to angrily wipe tears off her face.

    “Why are the best soldiers kept behind the walls to fester? why are publications about the Outside banned?”

    Hange presses the handkerchief into her eyes again.

    “Why aren’t we actively studying the titans? Why are we just… accepting this? How could we be so ignorant?”

    She nearly yells - screams - that last bit. I lay a hand on her shoulder.

    “Want to take this up with Erwin?” I murmur. “You have a point.”

    Hange takes a deep breath, still pressing the cloth into her eyes.

    Then, her shoulders start to shake. Is she crying again - no, she isn’t.

    Laughing, she gives the kerchief back to me - I hand it back (she’s going to wash it, not me). actually, she’s still crying. Laughing and crying at the same time, in joy, like she’s just killed the last titan to defile the face of this earth.

    “Of course I will. When we get back, first thing I’ll do is to ask Erwin to let me start researching titans.”

    Hange wipes her eyes with the handkerchief one last time, then stuffs it into her own pocket, giggling a little in her low, mellow voice.

    One more deep breath rises and falls from her chest as she gazes out to the nearly-dissipated titan head, a new, clear light behind her honey eyes.

    Suddenly, she reaches to her left (to me) and gathers me in her arms, planting a… what…?

    She releases me, grinning. My cheek sparks where her lips touched it. I feel vaguely like I’m going to die.

    “Thanks for bearing with me, Levi.” she says, a little embarrassed.

    “Get back on your horse,” I mutter, trying not to touch the skin where she kissed me.

    She chortles.

    By now, her mare has trotted up to her. Hange mounts quickly. I whistle for Dulais.

    “Oh, did I just lose my broken safety glasses? Where’s my spare pair?”

    I glance back at Hange, who’s digging around in her saddle bags.

    “Oi, catch.”

    She looks up at me just as I toss her the spare pair that she left in the mess hall this morning, and intercepts it with ease.

    “Thanks again!” she hollers. I grunt in acknowledgement.

    “Hey,” Hange exclaims, adjusting the bands that secure the goggles to her head, “these are better than my old pair!”

    “Some glassblower found a way to make better lens. He’s filthy rich from all the military commissions he’s getting now.”

    “Huh. Well, I should’ve switched my old ones out for these a long time ago. I’ll see if I can get my regular glasses lens changed, too.”

    “Better hurry up. We’re going to fall out of formation.”

    “Then let’s go!”

    She walks her mare up to mine and leans over to kiss my cheek again.

     _Damn you._

    Grinning, Hange slips her goggles over her eyes and canters back to retake her place in the formation. I follow her and her wind-whipped chestnut hair.

    Something’s changed, and it’s not just her. Not just me.

    It’s been a hundred years, but maybe...

 

**Author's Note:**

> yay for symbolism


End file.
